Your Right to Know

So says Republican state Treasurer Josh Mandel, who in his campaign to unseat U.S. Sen. Sherrod
Brown says it is “my mission right now to tell every school administrator they’ve got to put shop
class back in high school.”

“I am sick and tired of young people in this country being told they need to get some four-year,
liberal-arts degree in order to be successful,” Mandel said yesterday in a wide-ranging interview
with
The Dispatch. “The reality is, you can be a lot more successful and happy in life with a
vocational degree.”

So how did Mandel, who has taken heat in this campaign for refusing to take positions on current
legislation in the Senate, including bills introduced by Brown, find himself issuing such a
passionate plea for schools to reinstitute industrial-technology education in their buildings?

Is the Democrat Brown against shop class?

“This has nothing to do with Sherrod Brown,” said Mandel, who got onto the topic of shop class
while discussing his endorsement yesterday by the National Federation of Independent
Businesses.

In talking about the national trade association for small businesses with 24,000 members in
Ohio, Mandel said that many men and women who own or work at a small business don’t have a college
degree, “and that’s OK.”

Mandel, who has an undergraduate degree from Ohio State University and a law degree from Case
Western Reserve University, said, “We need to be focusing on making sure we have a trained work
force who can operate machines and heavy equipment and can make things with their hands.

“There are too many people who’ve been lied to and told you have to have a college degree to be
successful,” Mandel said.

Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum got himself in hot water for calling
President Barack Obama a “snob” for saying all Americans should go to college.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in April for people with a
bachelor’s degree or higher was 4 percent. It was 7.6 percent for people with some college
experience and 7.9 percent for high-school graduates who didn’t go to college.

Mandel said his belief comes from his four grandparents — none of whom attended college — and
from work he did as a Marine that was, well, less than pleasant. He described some of the chores he
undertook as a Marine sergeant fighting in Iraq, including having to burn human feces in barrels
because there was no toilet where he and other soldiers were stationed.

“That perspective feeds into my life experience,” Mandel said. “I have an appreciation of having
to get my hands dirty and do hard work.”

Mandel, who said voters have a clear choice this fall between two very different candidates,
said he and Brown agree “on the need to invest in infrastructure in this country” and to have
workers trained to build roads and bridges.

But when asked whether he would have supported Obama’s American Jobs Act, the president’s
unsuccessful $447 billion stimulus package that would’ve included money for infrastructure upgrades
and that Obama spent weeks last fall traveling the country to promote, Mandel said: “I’d have to
read about it.”

Justin Barasky, a spokesman for Brown — who did support Obama’s jobs bill, said, “What we do
know is, Josh Mandel would’ve voted no on the auto rescue, even though nearly 850,000 jobs in Ohio
are related to the auto industry.

“Josh is refusing to support a bill Sen. Brown sponsored to keep student loans from doubling.
Apparently, Josh is taking cues from Republican party bosses in Washington who are telling him not
to take positions on these bills.”

Mandel said he’s “not a Washington politician” with a “40-person Senate staff” and wasn’t going
to take stances on every specific bill. But he blasted Brown for not supporting a balanced-budget
amendment and for casting a vote in favor of Obama’s health-care overhaul.